ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

5pSP1. The IPA problem.

Peter Ladefoged

Phonet. Lab., Linguist. Dept., UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1543

Every few years it is appropriate to review our knowledge of the phonetic
structures of the world's languages and try to assess how many different speech
sounds there are. Problems arise because it is not easy to say whether two
sounds occurring in different languages are the same or not. Two sounds are
definitely different if they distinguish words within a language. But if they
occur in different languages this test cannot be used. This is the basis of the
IPA problem. The International Phonetic Association tries to provide a way of
symbolizing every distinct speech sound, but it cannot tell whether two sounds
are potentially distinct when they have been observed only in different
languages. The data from recent phonetic studies indicate that there are
limitless ways in which the sounds of one language can differ from another, but
that the number of parameters along which sounds can vary is fairly small. In
most cases the variation in the sounds that occur in different languages is the
result of the use of a different value of one of the parameters, rather than
the use of some novel parameter that has not been observed in other languages.